A Sort of Homecoming

“…Only
we can regret
the perishing of the
burned place.
Only we could call it a
wound.”

Margaret Atwood, A Fire Place

I am going under the knife again.

I have often doubted whether, for anyone, such an endeavor could be necessary twice. But I think that this mind of mine may be dying now, undone by the discordant anxieties that roar through my body and split the searing soul.

I poured currents of salt water and measurable time between myself and my lived existence: the history that consumed my physical form, the paranoia and the people that broke me. I tried to purge myself, to burn from my skin the trauma of those who abandoned me, who rejected me by not being there, who left me impaled upon their absence. All of the empty promises, all of those beautiful lies: no one protected me this time, and so I protected myself. But no body can sustain its own worth indefinitely, whether it is driven by anger or by some horrible love. I have become emaciated, my flesh a grisly pattern of bruises, scabs, and scars. How the hell could I have allowed this to happen? I am afraid to leave my room in the mornings. I hardly even know my own name. And fuck you, fuck all of you, for loving what you thought you understood and failing to take care of it anyways. Fuck you for letting me adore you and then disappearing again. Fuck you for making me feel dispensable. You saved my life and you shattered my mind and you made me wish that I had been left alone from the start. This is your indictment, as much as it is mine. At long last, I am writing for us all.

At any rate, I cannot survive another year of this. So I am going back to my own beginnings, to those sterile rooms wherein shame and isolation drip like morphine through my blistering veins. Yes, I am afraid. But this time I will give myself up willingly. They can have everything, they can have my name, my clothes, my history, my body–for I have no health, and I want health desperately. I want to be new and whole again, I want to be better for the people who still trust me. So take it, please, take it all. Get this thing away from me, this flesh, this madness, this consciousness colder than surgical steel. I do not want it, not any of it, I never did. But I was not given a choice.

I sometimes fear that I am not a thing worth keeping alive. You liked me so much better before learning what I am. I opened my eyes this morning and you were already gone. I was surprised that I could still feel anything by then, but I woke up alone and I wished that you had stayed. Or maybe I just wished that I was worth staying for. But I will not crawl, not ever, and so when I stood at the world’s edge, upon that rooftop, I climbed higher than I ever have before. The morning light was cold. My arms were outstretched. My feet were on the brink of some limitless oblivion, some ineffable liberation, some chaos like surrender and some tragedy that might set me free. I understood, at last, that Icarus could never have been consumed in flames without suffering, eventually, his invaluable descent. But might it have been worth the fall, to burn so unforgettably? Some part of me wanted to learn this for myself. But instead, I stepped back from that compelling precipice. I called my mother, who sacrificed her body to bring me into this beautiful, terrible world. I told her at last, in my own way, how very much I love her. Then I covered my ancient wounds in something new. 

So many people fear their own fragmentation. But I was undone in the beginning. I have no interest in pretending that I am anything other than mercurial, impassioned, half-insane. This story was written long before I knew what form it would take. Tiresian in nature, my language has predicted it all–her empty womb, that false crucifixion, the genderless prophecies, the horror of my own burning. Maybe this was the inexorable trajectory of my existence. But even so, I have to be better than this. I love him, her, them, you: I used to love myself, but I cannot love what I have become. This is not me, it is not, I refuse to accept it, I am not like this and I never was–not this broken, not this wasted, not a site for senseless suffering. Please, please, forgive me for this, for making it all so inescapable. Give me time, and nothing more. I will be whole again. I will be better. It will not always hurt so much. 

Subject me once more to the scalpel, and cut it all away. Sedate, anesthetize, lobotomize me–do anything you like, so long as I am well again. I want to pull my own skin apart. I want to tear it back and I want you to dismember me and I want to feel no pain. I will not have any more of this: the sleepless nights, the horrors in my periphery, the bouts of paranoia that make a nightmare of us all. I cannot endure many more days like this one, exposed to the sunlight, eyes downcast, consumed with some wrenching fear that I am alone and relentlessly despised within the confines of this rough reality. Nothing ever really helps, for I was not made to be saved. But I do not want your concern or your sanctimony. I just want to write. I want to heal. I want to not feel scared. I want someone to love me the way my dad never could. 

How lucky I am to be alive in this miserable world. I think that it was always coming to this. It is difficult to feel anything but fear, but I have been steadfast in my endurance for a long time now. Surely, I can keep on for just a little while longer. Thank you for surviving me–thank you all. There seems to be nothing left within me that can justify this, that can make it feel meaningful, that can put me back together again. I have tried and I have tried and I have tried and I have tried, and this is all that it amounts to. But even now, I want to be well again. I know that I will continue on. No one should have to live like this, and maybe that place can set me free. What, after all, have I left to lose?

I miss you, I love you, I hate you, I am you, and so I endure us as one. Return to me, please, and be whatever it was that you used to be. I would give anything to have you back again. So forgive me. Please. I love you. Please. You could never have made me whole, but it means the world to me that you tried. 

I am going under the knife again. What more is there to say?